


Home Fires Burning

by starryeyedknight



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 01:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30064473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starryeyedknight/pseuds/starryeyedknight
Summary: But that is what a mother does: hope even when all seems lost, and every day play the fool just for the sake of her child.The War of the Ring rages on and, in the Shire, the hobbits learn to live without those they love.
Kudos: 9





	Home Fires Burning

Saradoc offers to go with her to the forest boundaries. The first few times she refuses, citing a need to be alone, but as the weeks turn into months and the days grow colder Esmeralda accepts. It becomes a habit of theirs, as other couples might bring flowers for the table every Highday or take walks about the garden: walking silently, hand in hand, up to the borders of the Old Forest.

He will sit some distance away, smoking the pipe that their son gave him for his last birthday, staring into the grey mist of a new morning. Esmeralda will watch her husband from a distance and think _my word, I never saw him grow old before._ She delights in it, the feel of his face beneath her hands as they kiss in bed; but sometimes now her fingers will graze new shadows beneath his eyes, new lines upon his skin, and she will tremble. He needs to rest more, she says. He works himself to the bone under these new restrictions.

She doesn’t ask him what he’s thinking in these moments alone. Sometimes she hears the sound of weeping.

Neither does Esmeralda know what becomes of the parcels of food she leaves at the edge of the forest. Gnawed by rats or other more unspeakable things, she supposes, or stained green with mould and devoured by the ravenous mouth of mud-roots-leaves that is the forest itself. She wraps the parcels up anyway, regular as clockwork: mushroom pie, loaves of bread, peppermint biscuits. Sometimes she finds herself placing bottles of wine or sherry in with the supplies, finds herself giggling over the naughtiness of it all. _Well, and why shouldn’t she? Merry’s a grown lad. He’s of age. When he finds them he’ll be grateful of it._

(She knows this much: her son won’t find these. There is every likelihood he will never find them. But that is what a mother does: hope even when all seems lost, and every day play the fool just for the sake of her child.)

 _Bring him back to us_ , she whispers, but to who she does not know. The trees sway mournfully in the wind and their reply, if they give one, is utterly lost to her.

-

It’s just the two of them now, since Mother and Father have done. What was intended to be a week’s visit across the Brandywine to care for an ailing aunt has turned into months, since Lotho’s orders have come down. _Stability means no unnecessary travelling._ Now they murmur together in hushed voices and eat around the fire rather than laying the table formal-fashion. The smial echoes with the sound of Estella and Fatty rattling around here: two peas in a lonely cup.

At least, Fatty used to rattle. Lately he’s done nothing but sit in their father’s study and stare at old maps of lands beyond the borders.

As a Healer Estella is one of the few able to travel without being questioned. Tonight she stamps in late – skirts muddied, head aching, leather satchel heavy at her side – to see the fires not lit, no food on the table, and Fatty squinting at these damned maps as if they hold the future in them, and only he able to discern it. “For pities’ sakes, Fred!” she cries. “Can you not get up off your idle backside for two minutes?”

She doesn’t meant to be harsh. She’s always being too harsh with him, with everyone. But it’s winter, and she’s chilled to the bone, and Lotho’s Men stationed on every road with unfriendly eyes, and she’s nursed three hobbits through the winter ague already, hobbits who ought to have more vittles in them but had to surrender up supplies to Lotho and she is so, so tired.

Fatty blinks as if he’d not even heard her come in. “Oh. Hallo,” he murmurs. “I’ll get dinner on now,” as if it only just occurred to him, as if he doesn’t know who he is or what he’s doing.

He’s changed in these past months, her brother. First it was queer silences and whispering in corners with Merry Brandybuck and young Pippin; and then he came home from that trip to Crickhollow pale and quiet and somehow sterner and not quite _Fatty_ anymore. When folk wondered where Frodo Baggins had run off to, he’d look grave and turn his face away. He laughs little these days. Her brother might as well be a stranger.

“Don’t fuss. We’ll have a cold plate,” Estella says wearily, sinking into a chair. “Light a fire, would you?”

He does so, rubbing his brow as he goes. He really shouldn’t squint over those maps in the dim light; but he’s stubborn, her brother, he’ll not listen. They’re as bad as each other in that respect.

“You should leave those maps be awhile.”

“Oh. Oh, I can’t do that,” he insists. “I wanted to check where they went.”

Not this. She can’t do this tonight.

“We don’t have to talk about this now; just tidy them away, will you.”

“I can’t lose my place!”

 _You’re already lost_ , she thinks.

“I would have thought you of all people would understand, Estella, what with – ”

“You spent this summer barely speaking a word to me,” Estella says, and she feels her voice shake. “I worried for you – far more than I should have done! – because you were so quiet, and I thought you were in trouble. I asked you, and you said _nothing_ ; I went to Merry Brandybuck,” her lips twist with the memory of that particular meeting, “and he said _nothing_. I didn’t go to Mother and Father because I knew you wouldn’t like it. So I sat, I waited, and then you came home and you were different, you were _changed_ , and that was bad enough but things are _wrong_ now, Fred, and what am I supposed to do with you only half-here? I need you here with me, not off wandering in your own head!”

Fatty just stares at his hands as if he’s a fauntling again, being asked questions by his tutor when he hasn’t done his reading. And she’s sat on the other side of the fire and even though she could reach out and touch her brother’s sleeve, it feels like he’s a hundred miles away.

“I need you _here_ ,” she repeats, softer now. “Things are bad, Fred – worse than most folk realise, I think. And I can’t do this by myself…”

Without thinking of the distance, Estella reaches for him.

“Frodo would know what to do,” Fatty says sadly, and she pulls back. “Good old Frodo.” And then, more decisively. “No, Merry would know. He’d know precisely what to do about all this…nonsense out of Hobbiton. When he gets back, we’ll see – ”

“He’s dead, Fatty!” Estella cries. And her throat constricts, and she thinks she may just stop breathing then and there from the speaking of it – _she pictures a hot summer and Merry’s laugh warm in her ear, and broad hands spanning her ribcage, and she has to shake the image straight from her before it breaks her_ – because there it is, it’s out in the open and no amount of wishing will snatch it back. Fatty stares at her as if she’s gone mad: she’s on her feet and her colour is high and nothing else matters in the world. Because Merry Brandybuck is dead and that is bad enough; she can’t lose Fatty with him too. “Merry is dead, and Frodo and Pippin and poor Sam Gamgee. I don’t know what you were all conspiring about last summer but whatever it was, it did for them all; and there’s no use wishing otherwise.”

Fatty shakes his head once, and then again, and this time he’s the one that reaches for her. “I never asked – well, I never appreciated how hard it was for you after he left,” he says. “I’m sorry, Estella, I truly am – ”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Estella says stiffly, and turns away so he can’t see her face. “I know you miss them, Fatty, but you can’t depend on Frodo or Merry anymore, don’t you _see_ that? You have to start doing something, not sitting in Father’s study dreaming your life away like some…like some useless waste!”

(She’ll think on that conversation every night after Fatty is hauled off to the Lockholes. Of all the mistakes she’s ever made in her life, that is the one she can never forgive herself for.)

-

Nibs is too young to remember Mister Bilbo proper – though he recalls his face, a face of wrinkles and smiles and hands slipping into pockets to dole out brightly-wrapped paper, a very gentlehobbit as Ma might say – but he remembers the stories. Sitting beneath the Party Tree as the yarns were spun: _barrels down the river and fights on the slopes of mountains and eagles spinning through the skies_!

He used to make a game of it: running through the fields with a stick in his hands, pretending he was Mister Bilbo chasing trolls and dwarves. Ma would scold but Sam Gamgee, when he visited, would smile and show him how to hold the stick high so he looked like a proper fighting-hobbit. _There, Nibs. Now you’re ready for a proper adventure._

Well. Now he’s in one.

Mister Bilbo never said how when you’re scared your skin turns bone-cold and the world seems to shrink all around you; how when you’re near starving you feel as if your stomach might collapse in on itself. He never said what to do when folk are suspicious and frightened and it’s not safe to talk to anyone; how you can feel sick with loneliness sometimes; how queer it is to stand in the same village where you were born and not pass a single word with folk you’ve known since you were a bairn because no-one trusts anyone else anymore. He never said what it’s like to help your neighbours bury parents who should have had another ten, twenty years only they didn’t get their food or their medicine in time; how when you smuggle food to hungry folk you’ve got to do so quick so no-one notices; how if you line the walls of your cellar with blankets you can hide a hobbit there for a week or two, if someone’s looking for him.

He never said what to do when your mother has nightmares from Ruffians breaking into the house. What to do when your sister can’t stop crying and you don’t know how to help.

Maybe Mister Bilbo knew all those things and just couldn’t bear to say, Nibs thinks. That makes sense. He doesn’t think he’s ever going to be able to talk about this ever again.

-

“I could look after you, Diamond. I could look after your whole family, if only you’d let me.”

He’s right, of course. Priamus Longfoot is a respectable hobbit and wealthy too – though the so-called Chief claims wealth means nothing anymore, that the ‘redistribution’ means no-one will ever go hungry, that’s just so much puff. Everyone’s hungry now, and you can always get something if you’ve got the coin: food, blankets, pay off these Ruffians that prowl the lanes at night. They’ll hammer at the door and demand anything in the cellar – or worse, just stand outside the window, laughing to each other and knowing that you’re inside, squirming.

They do that outside their hole regular, now they’ve realised there’s no husband or father about the place. Sometimes Diamond will sit with her fingers stuffed into her ears and still hear their rough jokes. Priamus could change all that.

And it’s not as if she’s overrun with offers. Not that she thought she’d need them at the tender age of twenty-four. But now Ma’s died and it’s her alone…

No mother. No father. Her sisters are busy with families of their own. No friends likely to help – these days folk look to their own, and smile sadly with the knowledge that they won’t be able to help. All she has is Nanny Beryl, who spits in Priamus’ sherry when he visits, and her brothers. Neither Rowan or Basil have hit their tweens yet, so how are they to help?

It’s up to her. Like it or not the money’s running out, and she has her family to think of, and it’s a fool that won’t take protection against those Men – she wants to be bold, she _tries_ to be bold, she is wrung dry from being bold – and honestly there’s no use in fussing. It’s only -

It’s only, she never thought she’d have to do this.

Diamond was twelve when Pa died, twenty-three when Ma followed him. She’s got an elderly grandmother and two lads to think of, and her eyes are weak from working the family accounts by candlelight every evening, and she’s so, so tired of being the responsible one. She honestly can’t remember the last time she’s laughed – a full-belly laugh to bring the tears to your eyes, the sort that bruises your ribs. And Priamus is so respectable, and so serious, and when he puts his hand on her knee she feels nothing but cold.

It’s only, she can’t remember the last time she did something because she wanted to. Not because she had to.

Diamond lets Priamus walk her home and accepts his kiss to the cheek dutifully at the door. She hopes he doesn’t realise her hands are shaking at her sides. Because she’s not ready for this. She’s not ready for anything.

-

It had been easy at first. Paladin doesn’t think he’ll forget that sight in all his born days: all those clumsy, lumpish men fleeing as if their britches were on fire, Nell clutching her hawthorn bow and cheering along with the Tookborough lads. For the first time in months Paladin had felt something like happiness. _There, we have something to fight for at last._

Lotho’s response had come curt in the form of a letter warning the Thain of Tuckborough to remember his obligations, his family duty. Paladin’s reply was quick and to the point: _if anyone would play Chief of the Shire it should be the Thain, and no upstart._

He had chuckled at that over dinner, though Eglantine had shot him a queer look. “That’s not really the point though, is it dear?”

No, he supposed, it wasn’t. Still, it was a point worth making.

Rumour came from west and north and east: of tighter rations, rougher Men, grim grey prisons built in Michel Delving. In response Paladin rallied those he could and set up sentry posts around the borders of Green Hill country; he sent Pimpernell out with hunting parties to keep their supply levels high. His cousin Adelard was his right-hand, and snorted when he heard the talk come in. “Well, that’s what happens when you let northern folk try to run the country.”

Paladin didn’t say anything. Still, the borders of Tookborough were tightened.

It’s April when the letter from Saradoc comes, smuggled in by some enterprising young nephew. _I can’t believe how long it has been,_ his brother-in-law writes, _nor how long this may last if we don’t all join together. Paladin, I cannot go on watching my country burn. What can we do to stop this?_

 _Wait it out,_ Paladin replies. _It’s all we can do, in times like this. Wait and protect those we love._

 _But some of us are better-placed to do that than others_ , Saradoc writes back. _I have folk here starving. Together we have the resources and the numbers to push back against Lotho. Won’t you join with me?_

_I have my people; would you really have me risk what we’ve gained for the sake of Buckland and Hobbiton and Greenfields? I wish you all the luck in the world, but don’t ask me to forsake my duty. I have to protect my own._

Saradoc’s reply is clumsily scrawled; Paladin recognises the warning signs of his mounting temper. _Better that all of us are helped just a little bit, than some of us are helped a lot._

He has always been practiced in courtesy from the time he was a faunt. Paladin writes back with painstaking penmanship, calls Saradoc better than a brother, the finest Master that Buckland has ever known. But _you are asking too much of me, when I have already lost more than any hobbit could be asked to give. I will not sacrifice my own for others beyond my borders._

The response comes not from Saradoc, but Esmeralda: neatly penned and cold as the grave. _You have changed, Paladin. I did not realise how much._

He keeps this letter safe and in his breast-pocket, unanswered over his heart. _Changed_. If he has changed it is too little, and far too late. He protects what is his because he must, and if he has little thought to spare for the rest of the Shire he cannot help that. The last time he didn’t protect something of his own, he lost it entirely.

He can’t make that same mistake twice.

-

They do it two at a time: Pa at the front of the cart holding the ponies steady, Rosie and Jolly round the back unloading supplies. It only takes a moment for Tom to engage whoever’s on-duty at the Shirriff house in conversation and then _up_ – they can have two hobbits in the cart and under the sacking at a moment’s notice. They roll out nice and quiet and back to the farm; they hide the poor souls in the house until cover of darkness.

Many run to Scary to join the rebels; more want to flee to Tookborough, which always makes Pa antsy. Thain Paladin’s still taking refugees now, he says, but there’ll come a time when he won’t. _And then where will the poor souls go?_

When he gets like this Ma will take his hand and kiss it, holding it to her cheek as if she’s never known the touch of skin before. It always makes Rosie feel achingly lonely when she sees that.

“I shouldn’t be involving you in this, nor your brothers either,” Pa mutters.

Rosie sets her jaw, and tries to feel braver than she feels. “You always said we ought to help folk whenever we could. That we were luckier than most.” She might not be able to hold a sword or string a bow, but she can do this.

“I suppose. Lord knows I’ve tried to show the right example for you all. But then I’ve seen fine gentlehobbits do as much for us – poor Mister Bilbo, for example, with all the help he gave Sam…” Pa sees her expression and nearly crumbles. “Oh lamb. Oh, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said nothing.”

 _It’s fine, go on, I’m alright_ , she insists. Her brothers are just as bad, whispering Sam’s name as if he were dead. One day someone mentioned Sam Gamgee in Bywater Square and some old gammer actually offered her a handkerchief. Rosie had demurred. _I’m fine, really I’m fine. He’s not dead, you know._

They look at her as if she’s mad. That’s alright. Mister Frodo was said to be mad, and Rosie had never seen such a fine gentlehobbit as him.

Sometimes she will sit out back and look out over the fields, and think that maybe it’s all for the best Sam went away, for to see the Shire like this now would clean break his heart. Still, she’d wish him back here broken heart and all, if only she could see that sweet daft smile on his face again. _I know you’re alright Sam, even if the rest of them don’t. But please, please come home soon._

-

This wretched hut they’ve put them in is no more than a shack: one room to take meals and one where she and the Gaffer sleep at night, while the wind rattles at the wooden walls themselves. The Gaffer clicks his tongue: _in’t natural, a fellow hearing the wind as he sleeps; what’s wrong with a nice soft hole like normal folk live in anyhow?_

Marigold says very little when he gets this way. He’s not been doing so well lately, the poor Gaffer, and sometimes she thinks he forgets they’re here because they’ve got no choice. It’s hard looking after him on her own but there it is: Daisy stops in when she can, but she has her own family to worry about, and May spends all her time tending a poorly mother-in-law. Hamson and Fred are too far away to see them now, and Sammy…

Well. Sam’s another story.

She goes up to what’s left of Bagshot Row when she can: it’s like probing at a sore tooth with your tongue when you know you oughtn’t. You know it’ll hurt and you know you can’t help it; you do it to remind yourself the pain’s still there, that you weren’t a fool for making a fuss. She looks over that great awful gaping-mouth gravel pit they’ve left there, and she wonders if somewhere beneath all that muck is home. Whatever became of Ma’s old flowers beds where she taught them how to plant primroses; or the marks on the path where they used to play hopscotch; or if her own little wooden toy bird, the one Sam gave her for her fifth birthday which she lost in the garden? Is it all down there somewhere? Bagshot Row is gone. But maybe everything that made home _home_ is down there amongst the sand and the gravel and the slurry. Marigold will think these things and then she’ll turn her face into the wind, to pretend that’s why she’s crying.

Marigold has stopped wearing her old dresses: she’ll wear skirts that her sisters left behind when they went to get married and old workshirts of Sam’s; and sometimes she’ll pause before getting dressed and put her face to the fabric and _sniff_ , just in case she can catch a scent of home again.

It’s growing fainter by the day.

“Blasted thing,” the Gaffer cusses when evening when he can’t get the fire lit; he pushes her away from helping as if she still were a little bairn. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about this, Goldie. When’s your brother coming back from Buckland, eh, when’s he going to come sort this out?”

She swallows. The Gaffer _knows_ Sam’s not been seen in six months – but sometimes he forgets. Sometimes Marigold wonders if he forgets a-purpose, just because the truth is too painful for him to bear.

“I don’t know, Gaffer,” she says quietly. “Soon, I hope.”

“Soon. Better’d be soon. There was no call for him to be putting himself forward like that and leaving us here, not without a decent fire and all.” He takes her hand and pats it, and she feels like weeping. “Don’t you fret none, Goldie; he’ll be back soon. Maybe you’d ought to look up some of his favourite dishes for when he comes back, eh? Nice piece of fish for our Sam. He’ll be coming home any day, you’ll see.”

“Yes Gaffer. I’ll do that.”

When she’s down in the Shirriff-house picking up their weeks’ rations old Bess Rumple passes a couple of eggs from her own chickens, to see them through the week. Such small kindnesses send Marigold smiling just that little bit all the way up the Hill;; save when she sees Ted Sandyman coming down it, when she stops.

“Morning, Goldie!” he cries. “Seeing as you’re headed for home, perhaps I’ll join you.”

“Only my family calls me Goldie, Ted Sandyman; and you’re not family so I’d prefer you didn’t,” Marigold says stiffly. “And I wouldn’t call it _home_ so much’s the place we’re living currently.”

Ted just smirks, and turns on his heel to follow her. “It’d be nice if we could pass more than a word or two in the street; seeing as how we’ve known each other so long and all.”

“Nice for you, maybe, but not for me.”

Ted catches her arm and turns her about. There’s plenty of others about on the road, and in normal-times that would make any respectable hobbit think twice before putting a hand on an unwanting lass, but then these aren’t normal times. And Ted Sandyman isn’t a respectable hobbit.

“Well maybe you ought to be a bit nicer to me in future,” he urges, his breath smelling all of ale and second-rate pipeweed. “I could be real nice to you, Goldie, and to your father. And I would have thought you’d want a friend right now – specially one as is on such good terms as I am with the Chief.”

“Good terms!” she exclaims. “If that’s what you call licking his foot-soles and letting him knock down your dad’s old mill – ”

His face darkens, and he shakes her arm a bit. “And what’ve you got to be so uppity about? Not anything that I can see. Not now your pa’s so sick, that tom-fool Sam’s upped and abandoned you to die in the Old Forest without so much as a letter – ”

“Don’t you say that!”

They both turn – their silent audience turns around – the entirety of Hobbiton holds its breath. The Gaffer stumbles down the road, without his waistcoat or his jacket, and Marigold wonders what he’s doing out-of-doors – save when she sees his expression, and then she doesn’t wonder anything at all.

“Don’t you talk like that! Take your hands off my daughter! Don’t you say nothing about our Sam!” The Gaffer manages a weak shove; it barely moves the brawny Ted. “Take off! Leave us alone! My Sam’ll see you good and proper when he gets back! He’ll see you mind your filthy mouth!”

Ted bursts out laughing; he gestures wide as if hamming for the audience. “’When he gets back’! You think Sam’s coming back any time soon? You must be mad, if you think he’s ever coming back.”

“Leave off!” There are terrible sounds coming from the Gaffer: a groaning, creaking sound drawing straight from his heart,. “Go on, you leave us alone – ” But his limbs fail him and he cries out; his hand clutches clumsily at his chest as Marigold tries to support him.

Ted’s contemptuous snort is swallowed up by the creak of wheels and the stamp of a pony, and Tom Cotton leaping down from his father’s cart. “Ted Sandyman,” he says coldly, and Marigold doesn’t think she’s ever seen broad-faced, good-natured Tom look so furious, “lay off, and take your ugly mug home, or I’ll be dragging you home myself.”

“I’m a friend of the Chief; he’ll see you good and proper if you touch me.”

Tom comes up real close then and jabs his finger straight into Ted’s throat. “And how’s that going to help you,” he asks, “when I’ll’ve already knocked your teeth straight down your fool throat?”

Between the two of them they manage to support the Gaffer long enough to get him home: Tom gets the fire started while Marigold settles him down and begins the tea. She’s shaking, shaking fit to burst, and when she spills the tea Tom comes over and just lays a hand on her wrist, just like that. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“Oh,” he shrugs it off, “it weren’t nothing. And Ma says you and the Gaffer ought to come up for supper this week, see if we can’t get a bit of meat in you both – ”

She might say more, but for the sounds coming from the Gaffer. Marigold turns to see a terrible sight: her father sitting there with tears streaming down his face, unable even to mop them away with his sleeve. It’s a terrible thing to see your pa crying like that. He cries as if his heart is broken and it’ll never mend.

“Why,” he weeps, “out of all the hobbits in all the world? Why would Mister Baggins do it, why would he go away and take off, and take,” his voice cracks, “why would he take away our Sam?”

Marigold’s mouth twists. “Oh Dad,” she sobs, and then she’s in his arms, the both of them weeping together.

-

Lotho remembers those early visits to Bag End: Father stiffly civil and Mama prim at the lips, Cousin Bilbo too sharp and sparkling for Lotho ever to understand, and later on Fodo Baggins hanging on the outskirts, dutifully polite but eyes always a-spark. Mostly, though, he just remembers Bag End itself. A veritable palace of nooks and crannies, of brass fittings shimmering like water under starlight, books by the hundreds, the scent of lavender wafting in from the garden. He’d never believed in elves, but he thinks if ever there existed an elvish palace, it would be Bag End.

Now it is quite different. The fine brass fittings are dented beyond recognition, the empty bookshelves are thick with dust. Lotho thinks he can hear rats in one of the storerooms.

This, then, is what he has done. He reached out his hand to take Bag End, and crumpled it into dust and dirt.

His habit in evenings is to sit by a fire he cannot light, a sole candle’s flame reaching sluggishly into the gloom. There is a book of accounts by his feet, but he has not opened it in weeks. His only progress is on the bottle of brandy in his hand.

They whisper about him when he goes about his business. These _Men._ They think he can’t hear, but he hears. Or maybe They just don’t care.

His hand shakes a little as he puts the bottle to his lips.

He has nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. He once thought of Bag End as a Faerie-Land, a place that might – if he only wished it hard enough, if he had been born to different parents or if Bilbo had not looked twice at that Bucklander – have become a refuge for him. But no longer. From the huts out in the garden he can hear the sound of rough Man laughter.

He has locked the door and pushed up a chair beneath the handle, but that will not stop Them if They try to enter.

They have been whispering more of late, nudging each other and laughing as he passes. Someone is coming, one of them says. Someone important. Someone who will help him do bigger and greater things. When he says he has no wish to do anything bigger or greater they laugh at him. He is terrified in his own home.

 _Somewhere down the path_ , he thinks, _I took the wrong turn, and now there is nothing but weeds and muck in my path, and I cannot find my way out._ And he cannot, he cannot turn back. He is a Sackville-Baggins, and for better or worse, he must keep his hand to the plough.

 _Turn back, you fool_ , comes a voice that sounds queerly like his Uncle Bilbo, _go to someone, anyone, ask for help; no-one ever died of asking for help._ Lotho swallows, pauses, and then sets the brandy to his lips again.

Tomorrow, maybe. Not tonight, but maybe tomorrow.


End file.
